Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Dining Out

I was going to title this "Eating Out," but that apparently has some weird connotations -- no thanks to CTopher.

I took my mother to Blu Coral tonight. It was nicely ambient, clean and yuppie and modern. Yay for restaurant.com! In recent weeks we've also eaten at Cebu and Fusion Fire by the same courtesy. We go out to eat a lot now, I guess because the effort required to hunt and kill (jk... we don't eat rabbit) and sow and reap and buy and defrost and wash and chop and cook what we've eaten for the last 18 years isn't always worth it when guh is not home and dad might or might not be home.

Leo told me once about a college friend who would take his girlfriend out to eat every night. In a year, she gained 80 pounds and then he dumped her. I hope it wasn't because she'd gained weight.

Tonight at the table next to us was a grown, suited man with his well-mannered little daughter in elasticky pink sweatpants and a matching pink sweatshirt, like something my mom would have dressed me in when I was younger and still tries to convince me to wear. The girl could not have been more than 8 years old, but her dining etiquette was very refined although she was white and ate her sushi with a fork. Her legs were not even close to reaching the floor, she crossed them in ladylikeness and covered her lap with the red napkin. He listened to her chatter about little girl worries and finished the food that she couldn't.

"I'm sorry I couldn't give that to you," my mother said to me, glancing sideways at the father as he got up around the table to help the waitress wipe off his girl and to tell her not to worry about spilling her mocktail, and I realized I had been paying exceedingly close attention to the next table. Not that they would have noticed my creeperness, so immersed were they in one another's delightful company and the delicious, d'lovely, d'expensive sushi.

I set my chopsticks down and met her sorry gaze and wanted to tell her it was all fine and not her fault and that I also wished that I had such a father and that she had such a husband, but the words didn't come so I quickly broke the gaze. Then I picked up my chopsticks and slathered with wasabi the dragon fire maki that I had been neglecting.

After winning a bet that entitled me to dinner at Trotters, and after a birthday prix fixe at Alinea, I thought about becoming a food critic. But I guess I'm more like Emile than Anton Ego. I like food too much to be a foodie. Lately, especially as I've decided that binge eating is more fun than hitting the gym, my habits are looking more and more like gluttony and my composition is increasingly oleaginous. I guess in this world, 1/3 the population of which is under-fed and 1/3 of which is starving making for 2/3 for whom feeling full is an elusive concept, eating probably shouldn't be a hobby. But I'm still very much in need of holification so for now my earthly comforts will be in food, which my heavenly Father seems to always keep within my reach though this little indulgent birdy does not sow or reap and does not do much breadwinning.

A few will find safety in their earthly families, and the fortunate of those will recognize that it is a blessing from God.

Father God, I thank You for a human father who keeps me longing for more.

Let me make it plain: I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage... that in the world’s finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, of all the blood they’ve shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened with men.

// Vanya Fyodorovich

I have come to believe that by and large the human family all has the same secrets. They tell what is perhaps the central paradox of our condition, that what we hunger for perhaps more than anything else is to be known in our full humanness.

a slave set free by Love nailed down. an orphan adopted by the High King. learning to let life well up from being all her, in faith. this blog contains some of the mileposts and verbal vomit along the way––streams of semiconsciousnesss––notes filed away from patient teachers and traveling friends.

God must be on my side! an innocent Stranger died me to life, calls me friend. they say love never changes, but they must have lied because Love changed my direction and gave me life when He scribbled in the sand and did not condemn––no He saves me, raises me, poverty to plenty, heals me, clothes me, rags to righteous. He tethers me even as i wander seeking a homeland... finding that it has found me.